Caring for the sparrow, if the sparrow prays… 9 July 2008

“And those who would deny that there is a moral component to it I think are wrong. The reason that I make a decision to support the choice position is not because I don’t think it’s a moral issue but because I trust women to make a prayerful decision about this issue.”

I noticed this at the Ben Smith Politico site. Frankly, I am wary of their interest. Much less their joint interest.

The Obama campaign sent out a statement this morning announcing that both Barack and Michelle would be focusing on “economic security for America’s working women.”

“I don’t accept an America where a woman earns less than a man for the same work, or an America that makes women choose between their kids and their careers,” Obama said in a statement.
…

In his outreach to Clinton donors and supporters, Obama continuously points to equal pay — he doesn’t push abortion, which many suspected he would do to convince disaffected Clintonites that they should vote for him.

Yes, thanks, he is big on Ledbetter in his speeches. I am so reassured. LOL Remember FISA?? (vote is today), which used to be “big in his speeches”… via Jake Tapper:

Obama’s FISA Shift

July 09, 2008 10:14 AM

“To be clear,” Sen. Barack Obama. D-Illinois, spox Bill Burton told Talking Points Memo last October about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, “Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”

Reaffirmed Obama’s Senate office in December: “Senator Obama unequivocally opposes giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies and has cosponsored Senator Dodd’s efforts to remove that provision from the FISA bill. Granting such immunity undermines the constitutional protections Americans trust the Congress to protect. Senator Obama supports a filibuster of this bill, and strongly urges others to do the same…Senator Obama will not be among those voting to end the filibuster.”

And now?

Free from the political pressures of the Democratic primaries, Obama now says he will vote for the FISA bill even if it doesn’t include retroactive immunity for the telecoms.

And moreover, he will no longer support a filibuster of the bill if it doesn’t include telecom immunity.

“My view on FISA has always been [read: YOU are wrong, I am the same — Mcat] that the issue with phone companies per se is not one that overrides security interests of the American people,” Obama told reporters on June 25. “It is a close call for me but I think the current legislation with exclusivity provision that says that a president — whether George Bush, myself or John McCain — can’t make up rationales for getting around FISA court, can’t suggest that somehow that there is some law that stands above the laws passed by Congress in engaging in warrantless wiretaps.”

Tapper gives an outline of amendments to the bill and a bit on expectations for the cloture vote (more info, and on amendments, at Greenwald), then

How will Sen. Obama vote on all these measures?

He will support the Dodd-Feingold, Specter, and Bingaman amendments.

Then regardless of how those amendments fare he will vote to invoke cloture — voting against a filibuster — and for final passage of the bill.

^^^

Jonathan Turley on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow (via Attytood – he links to the vid at the bottom of his post)

And, you know what`s terrible is like one of those stories where someone is assaulted on a street and a hundred witnesses do nothing. And in this case, the Fourth Amendment is going to be eviscerated tomorrow. And 100 people are going to watch it happen because it`s just not their problem.

And, you know, the only reason it didn`t happen today was it was delayed for a funeral. That`s how much these people put into the Fourth Amendment.

But you talk about expanding the president`s power, it`s coming out of the marrow of the Fourth Amendment. It`s coming out of the bone. And it`s going to hurt.And it`s being done for political convenience. There`s not an ounce of principle, not an ounce of public interest in this legislation.

So, at least show us respect of not calling it a compromise.

To be honest, IMO, the Constitution, and how Obama (he’s not alone, indict the whole 110th) has used it in the run — I taught Con Law –, will eventually end up being Ricky Ray Rector. It’s 12:01am on Death Row.

[Y]esterday, Andrew Sullivan noted the post I wrote this weekend regarding why telecom immunity is so destructive and corrupt, but Sullivan then wrote: “In the period after 9/11 in question, I do not find these cardinal sins. Venial maybe.” Had this surveillance lawbreaking been confined to the weeks or even months after the 9/11 attack, that might be true. Even EFF’s lead counsel, Cindy Cohn, said that had the illegal spying occurred only during that time period, it’s unlikely that even they would have objected and sued.

But the reality is that the Government and the telecoms broke the law not for weeks or months, but for years — well into 2007. They continued to do so even after the NYT exposed what they were doing. They could have brought their spying activities into a legal framework at any time, but chose instead to spy on Americans in exactly the way our laws criminalize. Manifestly, then, national security had nothing to do with why they did it. The Bush administration chose to do so because they wanted to eavesdrop without oversight and to establish that neither Congress nor the courts can limit what the President does, and telecoms did not want to jeopardize the massive government surveillance contracts they have by refusing.

This was rampant, deliberate lawbreaking that lasted for many years. We either live under the rule of law or we don’t. ::snip::

Prayerful America has been wearing. Born agains, as with many adult converts, are a festering, infected wound against humanity… Faith, in modern America, seems to be about personal publicity and automatically excusing oneself of any responsibility for anything, thru one’s self-advertised closeness to Jesus. Basically, these people hear a dial tone and tell themselves it is Jeeeeeeeeeeeeesuhs.

It’s a routine. A formula. It’s a dead thing, a commercial enterprise, and out to kill the rest of us.

Just to spread the joy around (and there is so much joy, right?)… there used to be a lot of Clinton lovers whining about how Bill grew up poor, hard scrabble Southern poor even. It meant he cared. One born every minute. If one actually read his life, not so clear. Struggles, yes, no question. I’d never say it was not rough for his mother. But Bill was selected early. That film of Bill in DC thru Boys’ Nation, shaking JFK’s hand was no accident. Neither was the Rhodes Scholarship, neither was Oxford… on and on.

The one time he got hit hard (other than Hillary on his ass, her personal Bimbo Watch), he lost the governor’s mansion… he simply revolved to a propped up position at the Rose Law Firm… with an office, secretary and so on. And teaching law. I am pretty sure Bill whined to Olympic levels the two years he was out of the mansion.

Like this:

Related

At the end of the last thread, I linked to this story about the Iranian missile tests that I thought was remarkably level-headed and fair-minded. It appears in the NY Daily News, of all places, which NYers (and maybe others from outside NY) of a certain age will remember as a scandal sheet of pronounced jingoistic and reactionary political views.

I believe in personal responsibility
What this means is that Obama believes in privatization of one part of the public sphere; that part of it which deals with rights concerning essentially personal behavior, behavior which he sees as part of the moral sphere. He wants to take rights achieved by public action, militancy and struggle and are now guaranteed by the state and make them the affair of private entities, mainly churches.

Just a note: the part of the public sphere which deals with economic relations and social welfare has already been successfully dealt with by the neoliberals,

Frankly I think as he hedges and screws over women (you’re just bloooo ooo oo), he is in thumbscrews, hostage to the evangels, the “false faith” gurus like Wallis, the Catholic Bishops and the war party, which is not going to be helping, much less establishing rights and access, women, the poor, gays, children. Small meatless bones will be tossed and people will be told to b grateful. And pray.

LOL at the Geraghty link, at National Review Online, is all the stonewalling the camp is going thru to hide his list of clients. And for a long time now, he hides, or claims he had no scheduler, or cannot find, yadda yadda, his schedule from his days in Ill lege.

It was “cut off his nuts” talking down to black people over “faith based” … well, that’s a drag, his faith based roll out (and all the Jesus/faith/Christian talk – ugh). I thought he was referring to fathers’ responsibility, given Obama’s response.

I called senators offices this am. Had signed ACLU form letter to them earlier, to vote no on FISA. Schumer’s gave me a no, Hillary’s office said she opposes immunity, but no straight answer on vote on bill. Turns out she voted NO. My cynical self says she would have voted for it if she had been running for prez. Oh well, yay-rah Hillary, today, whatever…

I was not being uselessly dramatic recalling Ricky Ray. Today was a bad day, a pox on the Dem party and supporters for PLAYING around in every direction over this (oh I so believe that NutnaggerRoots cared or MoveOn cared or or or).

The “Progressives for Obama” project was always doomed, largely because the candidate was determined to pull the rug from under it at his earliest opportunity. That time has arrived, in such dramatic fashion that even the corporate media recognize that Obama’s sharp Right turns are irreversible and much more clearly reflect his essential political nature.

Obama chuckled last week at the very thought of having been “tagged as being on the Left” – and then unceremoniously jettisoned those Leftists that had taken it upon themselves to claim him as one of their own. In case “the Left” didn’t get the message, Obama wrapped the insulting rejection in a Zanesville, Ohio speech announcing his “faith-based” appeal to Reagan Democrats and Bush Republicans.

But the most important reason that “Progressives for Obama” should have never existed is its utter lack of content. Leftists attempted to impose themselves on an electoral campaign where they were not wanted, and yet persisted in identifying with an organization over which they had no control, no ability to provide content. It was a game of make-believe, that has run its illogical course. Frankly, the project can also be seen as an act of opportunism, an attempt to graft the Left onto a corporate campaign that at some point must eject it like a foreign body.

If it were just that lonely Lefties, tired of fighting in a thoroughly corporate-saturated political culture, simply wanted to hitch a ride with the younger Obamite crowd, they might be forgiven. But these veteran progressives deployed their reputations to spread falsehoods that they knew to be untrue. They provided a veneer of progressive credibility to a candidate who was nothing of the kind.

They provided a veneer of progressive credibility to a candidate who was nothing of the kind. — BAR via Madman.

Yup and the Obama backers are laughing pretty hard.

I am reminded of one thing, when the Buffet and Gates PR extravaganza burst like an exploding cancer across the media, for nearly a week… I thought I have to wait a coupel fo years for the first crack. No… less than 3 months, the big article in the LAT abut how fucked the “philanthropy” ggame is with them (what a shock) More investment in toxic industries in the Niger Delta than poor washing money run theu the same area.

So……………………. obama is clearly shaking people off his back. The heavy hitters will save him, he thinks. One fo the pale pre orgasmics (Jonathan Alter) warned today that Invesco might be a bit much.

I’d say it is. if that is not a bad day for him, others will be. Only so much helium can alst so long.

Shame on Feingold for giving Obama so much cover on Countdown. I’ve been happy to vote for him and Gwen Moore (my rep) in the past couple of elections, but I don’t think I can vote for any donk any more. They’re just distractions, honey traps for liberals. I’m a slow learner, but that’s where it is now.

hoping to qualify for faith-based subsidies under the new Obama administration

So true, they [non profit orgs and their troops] come out of the woodwork when it seems the Dems have a chance to do some sweeping motions in the wreckage. LOL THe Republicans hand them their blue overalls, hair net and dust mop.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Sonny Landham carved out a tough-guy reputation in a series of big-screen roles, from roughing up Sylvester Stallone to getting tossed out a window by Carl Weathers. He pulls no punches in his newest role: Libertarian challenger to a man known for political toughness, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Now 67 and living in northeastern Kentucky, the man who played Billy Bear in “48 Hours” and was killed by an alien in “Predator” admits his action-movie days are behind him. “I think I’m having wild action when I take two aspirin with my hot chocolate at night,” he quipped.

The actor known for his powerful physique, booming voice and his American Indian heritage says he’s serious about his longshot bid, because too many politicians are indifferent to voters’ problems.

“I am running to win,” Landham said at a news conference Wednesday at the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort.

He promised to keep his campaign simple and direct: “It’s about the economy, which nobody in this whole election year is truly speaking about.”

Landham refers to McConnell, a four-term Republican, as “Boss Hogg” after the corrupt politician from “The Dukes of Hazzard” TV show. He bluntly called Democratic candidate and millionaire businessman Bruce Lunsford an “elitist.”

Even President Bush is a target: “He took us into a war on lies,” Landham said in an earlier interview, claiming the actual intent was “to put ‘Big Oil’ back into Iraq.”

To qualify for the November ballot, Landham must collect at least 5,000 valid petition signatures by Aug. 12. State Libertarian Party Chairman Ken Moellman said the petition drive began recently and he believes Landham will make it.

But the bid includes some campaign baggage that seems scripted for Hollywood, instead of socially conservative Kentucky. Early in his acting career in the 1970s, Landham bared it all in adult films.

Asked whether that could hurt him politically, Landham replied, “What can I do? That was a part of my life you cannot call back.”

Church officials say UCF Student Senator Webster Cook was disruptive and disrespectful when he attended Mass held on campus Sunday June 29. It was during that Mass where Cook admits he obtained the Eucharist.

:::

Cook claims he planned to consume it, but first wanted to show it to a fellow student senator he brought to Mass who was curious about the Catholic faith.

“When I received the Eucharist, my intention was to bring it back to my seat to show him,” Cook said. “I took about three steps from the woman distributing the Eucharist and someone grabbed the inside of my elbow and blocked the path in front of me. At that point I put it in my mouth so they’d leave me alone and I went back to my seat and I removed it from my mouth.”

A church leader was watching, confronted Cook and tried to recover the sacred bread. Cook said she crossed the line and that’s why he brought it home with him.

“She came up behind me, grabbed my wrist with her right hand, with her left hand grabbed my fingers and was trying to pry them open to get the Eucharist out of my hand,” Cook said, adding she wouldn’t immediately take her hands off him despite several requests.

:::

Cook is upset more than $40,000 in student fees have been allocated to support religious organizations on campus for the 2008-2009 school year, according to student government records. He denied he is holding the Eucharist hostage to protest that support.

Regardless of the reason, the Diocese says its main concern is to get the Eucharist back so it can be taken care of properly and with respect. Cook has been keeping the Eucharist stored in a plastic bag since last Sunday.

“It is hurtful,” said Father Migeul Gonzalez with the Diocese. “Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family.”

:::

Cook said he’d consider returning the Eucharist if he gets an apology and a meeting with the Bishop’s office to discuss the Diocese’s policy on physical force.

Pending final negotiations, I hope Cook has punched some little holes in that plastic bag, so Jesus can breathe.

One week after a University of Central Florida student snatched something sacred from church, armed UCF police officers stood guard during Sunday Mass to protect what Catholics call “The Body of Christ.”

Minutes before the Mass began, Student Senator Webster Cook returned the Holy Eucharist he was holding hostage in a Ziploc bag ever since smuggling the blessed wafer of bread out of the Catholic Mass service Sunday June 29.

:::

“I am returning the Eucharist to you in response to the e-mails I have received from Catholics in the UCF community,” Cook wrote in a letter to the church. “I still want the community to understand that the use physical force is wrong, especially when based on assumptions. However, I feel it is unnecessary to cause pain for those who are not at fault in this situation.”

Cook said some threatened to break into his dorm room to rescue the Eucharist. Brinati said the Diocese of Orlando didn’t condone those threats, but was happy Cook had a change of heart and returned it.

According to catholic theology the consecrated wafer is actually supposed to be the body of christ. In what sense, of course no one knows, because even catholic theology admits that it retains all the physical properties of a wafer.

Talk about meaningless lunacy. This is the same organization that claims to know when some cells in a female body have acquired special status because they been assigned a soul by a soul adminstration facility.

However, it’s interesting how much of what we wear and consume probably couldn’t be produced unless poor people in Third World countries had the strength to drag themselves into the factory or the fields every day; and since a lot of Third World workers derive strength from religion, you could say our way of life couldn’t do without it either, criticisms of religion notwithstanding. I mean, it’s safe to say that most of the food we eat in America is harvested by people leaning on religious beliefs (or, depending on your POV, a crutch). Are we quite sure we’re not surviving on “the wafer” too?

take your pick. We cooperate with it all, at the very least, generate a good deal of it.. Not news… Not every religious practitioner is in league with us, but many are, too many. And all of it inter-cooperates

Koppel was on with Charlie Rose, very entertaining… Charlie began a whine, about Where is Our Energy Policy?? As if he cares. Koppel laughed in his face, said it is called ‘The “Stans’… an extension of what we have always done. Repressive governments, one after the other, that we do business with… careful to keep an emotional “enemy” or two on hand.

It’s not like we are for Democracy. However we bleat. I’d say our way of life depends on Oppression.

oh, and PS- re the student and the wafer – who on earth can consume a communion wafer “immediately”? They stick to the roof of your mouth, sometimes for the entire rest of the service! Are they going to do mouth checks of exiting congregants after mass in that church from now on? sheesh.

Even his comment on his Access Hollywood family interview did not ring true to me.

He does this interview with the girls and wife and then says it was a mistake. Okay, fine if he thinks so. I thought it was a good move, came off well. What irked me was that he went on to say “I was surprised by the attention it received.”

He’ll reverse anything over night… is what I notice, except what pleases the center right. Too late too late on the Access Hollywood, the stupid thing runs for 4 nights, different segments from the interview each night.

One night, think night two, it was followed by a just wonderful interview (dumb as rocks) with Hulk Hogan’s family. Once he was a wrestlemania personality, whatever, campy as hell…… now with the son in jail and hours of taped phone calls in whcih they blithely discuss the friend left in a vegetative state as a result of a car accident…and he and the son talk about angling for a reality show, over the vegetative body, so to speak.

And I believe in canddidates reaching out, going where the PEOPLE are, shake anyone’s hand, look anyone in the eye… fine for her and him. The hcildren are small. I mean, if one wants to discuss “pinping out”… as has been done previously….

July 4 in Montana was about filming his bio pic for the convention. I think they did the interview thinking it was nothing. More filming. LOL

[… ] We were even told that the excitement surrounding Obama constituted a “movement.” But of course, there was never a social movement that was devoid of content, and excitement is a politically neutral quality that can be generated by the Left or the Right – or in wholly apolitical circumstances.

“They provided a veneer of progressive credibility to a candidate who was nothing of the kind.”

Cant avoid the incoming wave of aliteration because the following is so priceless, precious, perfect

If popularity and excitement are hallmarks of progressivism, then “American Idol” is a valuable progressive institution. (In reality, it is a great diversion, and to that extent, harmful.)

Followed by:

This illusionary progressivism – as vapid as the candidate, himself – posits a movement without regard to content, objective direction, or a even simple analysis of who profits and who pays the campaign’s bills and determines its ultimate goals and priorities.

[…] tell me these really are their plans… If they are, I will laugh as hard as I did over moiv comments and links on the HIgh Holy Catholic Holy Wafer Blasphemous Kidnapping. The staffer said Democratic leaders […]

Keith Olbermann (fierce Obama excuser, defender, cheerleader and fierce Bush critic, often re his disgraceful shredding of the Constitution) is on vacation, and what happens but Obama votes for FISA!

Surely it has intruded upon his R&R. I picture him banging out a Special Comment in his hotel room, the ice melting in the Margarita, dont you?

Oh wait, no, he’s already got that alleged flip covered. When it came out that Obama was reneging on his promise to vote against the bill, Keith, in high octane breathless scoop mode, floated a Secret Plan possibility, in lieu of the angry Special Comment (that would have been served up to Hillary, if she had been in BO’s shoes).

In his special plan, Obama comes out the hero. He is the one we are waiting for… I believe it has Obama voting for FISA now (just as cover for the secret plan that will be implemented later) then swooping down in full avenger mode to instigate criminal proceedings against the telecoms once he gets ensconced in the Oval Office.

Obama just has never seemed to me to have a good temperament for being president. He may be “progressive” or some wispy approximation thereof, but his tone is often pure imperial Dubya when it comes to explaining his statements or deigning to acknowledge criticism. I can’t believe people aren’t noticing this. I almost think ALL politicians have caught this bug now.

So.

As many parts of the United States recover from a devastating series of hurricanes, we end today's show with an update from one of the hardest-hit communities along the Gulf Coast. Port Arthur, Texas, is a fenceline community with several massive oil refineries that flooded during Hurricane Harvey. Just last week, a fire at the Valero oil refinery in Po […]

Six days after Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, 3.4 million U.S. citizens in the territory remain without adequate food, water and fuel. But as the massive crisis became clear over the weekend, President Trump failed to weigh in, instead lashing out at sports players who joined in protest against racial injustice. It took the president five full day […]

Amid increasing concern over chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head, a recent study of the brains of 111 deceased NFL players found all but one were found to have CTE. We speak with Dr. Harry Edwards, sociologist, author and sports activist, who says a consequence of CTE that is largely ove […]

North Korea says Trump's dangerous rhetoric is tantamount to a declaration of war. But even if military officials try to act as a restraint on Trump's hostility, Trump isn't bound by the advice he gets from anyone, says Col. Larry Wilkerson

The Alternative for Germany party, which has moved so far right that it includes neo-Nazis, now has a seat at the table. Meanwhile, both the Christian Democrats and the social democrats lost big, explains TRNN's Shir Hever

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Another Republican attempt to dismantle Obamacare collapsed in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday as the party was unable to win enough support from its own senators for a bill to repeal the healthcare reform law.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Students and faculty at Georgetown Law School gathered on Tuesday to protest that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was delivering an address about the right of free speech on college campuses to an invitation-only audience without giving critics of the Trump administration an opportunity to ask questions.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) told a congressional committee on Tuesday he did not believe his predecessor Mary Jo White knew of a 2016 cyber breach to the regulator's corporate disclosure system, the exact timing of which could not be known "for sure."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican political consultant Roger Stone, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, flatly denied allegations of collusion between the president's associates and Russia during the 2016 U.S. election in a meeting with lawmakers on Tuesday.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.